Moon Chronicles

When backing a Kickstarter idea, it’s always surreal meeting face to face with the folks behind it. The team constantly updates supporters on the project’s status, but getting a hands-on preview of the aforementioned work is like peeking behind the heavy curtains. You expect to see a bizarre circus — the Keebler elves wrestling with Chupacabras — but at a recent Nintendo eShop event, it was just Yacht Club Games’ Sean Velasco showing offShovel Knight.

“They don’t have games like this anymore,” he said. “We want this to be a gateway game. Getting into mental space.”

And that mind-set he’s talking about is the 1980s NES era, a time when titles were brutally tough, but gamers powered through the most grueling of levels without the benefit of save points or refillable health.